The Eric Normand Podcast Are monads practical?
Dec 5, 2019
Dive into the intriguing world of monads! Discover how they help maintain functional purity in programming, particularly in Haskell. The discussion evaluates their practical applications in managing input/output and mutable states. Are monads essential in every scenario? This conversation questions their universal necessity, sparking a thought-provoking exploration of their relevance in the broader realm of functional programming.
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Haskell's Monad Rationale
- Haskell uses monads due to its goal of functional purity, even having the slogan "avoid success at all costs".
- This resulted in needing a way to handle effects like I/O while maintaining purity.
Monads' Usefulness Beyond I/O
- Monads are useful for state, error handling, and continuations beyond I/O.
- This raises questions about their practicality when other languages have built-in features.
Practical Monad Usage
- Use monads in Haskell and Scala due to their existing role in these languages.
- Avoid them in languages like Clojure or ML where their benefits are less clear.